At my first weekend retreat for spiritual director training, one of the women told us that her family teased her about going to "guru girl school". I told her I'd be borrowing that phrase for my title :).

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Liberal/Progressive Christianity

From an article I found on progressive Christianity...

While liberal Christians share a similar faith language with conservative / evangelical / orthodox Christians, many times we have different meanings attached to those words and offer a different vision of the faith than some people might realize. Unfortunately there is no cut and dried test per se that will land a believer firmly in the liberal camp. Many of them are evangelical and /or still draw strongly from the Orthodox traditions. However for the sake of identification the following will give some illumination as to the general beliefs of many (but not all) liberal, progressive and postmodern Christians:

1) We are willing to be open to all the possibilities of who Jesus was said to be, and focus more on His life than His death. We may question His divinity, believe in the Trinity, or be Unitarian.

2) We believe that the Bible contains truth but is not always literal. We believe that it is a map and not the final destination of our journey.

3) We believe other faiths contain truths as well.

4) We believe that asking questions is okay, and that there is rarely such a thing as a single black and white answer to those questions.

5) We are seeking closeness to God, not points for following certain rules which will buy our way into heaven. We take Jesus' admonitions to the Pharisees to heart and focus on the grace and compassion of God.

6) We welcome other seekers regardless of who they are as God wants us to include people rather than exclude them.

Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. You are a mystery novel dealing with theology, especially with catholic vs liberal issues. You search wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that learning is essential in life.Take this quiz!